


Recollections in Tranquility

by EdenLies



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drama, F/M, Letters, Love Poems, Poetry, Psychological Drama, Romanticism, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27855941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdenLies/pseuds/EdenLies
Summary: "When you put pen to paper, you create something that is real." Or: Lord Melbourne retires to Brocket Hall after the royal wedding to suffer in silence, and finds himself becoming something of a poet.
Relationships: William Lamb 2nd Viscount Melbourne/Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819-1901)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, I'm so excited to share my first Vicbourne fic! This is part one of a two-part story, and the second part should be following shortly since I have already begun on it. This story was inspired by my realization that in 1x03, when Lord M tells Victoria that "happiness can always be recollected in tranquility," he was indirectly quoting Wordsworth!

_“I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.”_

_~William Wordsworth, Preface to his Lyrical Ballads, 1800_

* * *

William Lamb does not write on Saint Chrysostom, but he does spend his days writing poetry. In his shirtsleeves and his rumpled trousers, ensconced in his lonely office in Brocket Hall, he spends countless hours penning lines. Sometimes they flow from him with a natural grace, as if he and his quill had become one. These are the words he always wished he could speak, but never had. Other times, however, he writes lines and verses haltingly, only to immediately scratch them out, crumple them up into little wads of ruined paper, and toss them to the floor by his feet. These are the words he always wished he could scream, but never had.

These are his recollections.

 _She spoke of happiness_ , he writes, on a day in late November when his quill feels steady and true.

_And for me, that was enough_

_We sat together that afternoon_

_Measured the worth of our days_

_Knew that though we would part ways_

_That what we had_

_Had been enough_

_It is enough, stay now mine hand_

On a late evening some weeks later, however, once the cold snows of December have whipped into his estate from the north, Lord Melbourne writes the kinds of lines that burn his bones and that end up discarded on his threadbare Persian rug. Even the fire in his hearth does not warm him so.

 _I felt her breath on me_ , he writes, his quill trembling. His penmanship is hideous, he thinks, but not as hideous as his words.

_My little Queen in white_

_I could touch her then_

_Dance a different kind of dance_

_Lower her crown_

_Unfasten her dress_

_Watch the hallway candles sputter_

_Shy away as they hear me mutter_

_That’s it, my darling_

_That’s good, my darling_

_That’s—_

Enough. He slams his quill down, and the inkpot at his elbow rattles. He grabs at the paper, rips and tears at it. He acts as if breaking his lines into haphazard scraps could make them disappear from his mind.

But he knows they won’t. When you put pen to paper, you create something that is real.

He puts out the hearth and sleeps cold in his armchair that night.

* * *

Brocket Hall is a tranquil place. Quiet, peaceful. But its tranquility, William is convinced, will become his demise.

Because all he can do in these lifeless halls, in his humid greenhouse, in his barren fields, is think.

And write.

Lord, does he write.

Case in point: a poem dated from the fifth of January.

_In a desolate ballroom we communed_

_On a lacquered piano bench_

_Scant inches between us_

_Our whispers trailed, trawled, traveled_

_She shared her fear of ruin_

_I told her she did not destroy, but create_

_She put my pieces back together_

_Built me back into a whole man_

_Gave rhyme to reason_

_Order to the seasons_

_She was my reason_

_She saw me, therefore I existed_

And yet another, from three days later, though this one he quickly consigns to the dustbin:

_She wears my orchids at her breast_

_Upon her beating heart_

_And so I shall teach her_

_Just what they mean_

_They stand for love, of course_

_These orchids do_

_Their rounded petals, a time for two_

_Their fragrant scent, intoxication_

_Their distant home, a far-off nation_

_Where orchis means the kind of love_

_That kisses and bites and sucks_

_That brings fire to your every day_

_Burns all those little petals away_

_Bruises and scratches and f—_

He gets no farther that day.

* * *

Victoria writes too, although she is no poet. She does not mix well with pentameters and enjambments, with well-structured rhythms or rhyme schemes. She has a spontaneous spirit, one that runs wild through the gardens and the forests like a little nymph; the rules of poetry had always seemed stifling to her, much like the rules at Kensington.

She spends her days penning her name onto documents of state, writing invitations for events at the palace, and scribbling in her journal before she retires every evening.

And above all, she writes letters.

She writes to Lord Melbourne the following, after Vicky is born:

_Dear Lord M,_

_I hope this letter finds you well at Brocket Hall. It has grown incredibly chilly here at the palace, and I spend my days dreaming of warmer climes. Your greenhouses must be an exquisite reprieve, at this time of year._

_I am happy to report that my little girl, Victoria, is healthy and well. She curious and bright-eyed for a little babe, and we have taken to calling her Vicky when we are alone with her. Albert thinks she may have inherited his aptitude for books—I can already envision the mounds of scholarly texts he will pile onto her curriculum once she begins her studies in a few years’ time._

_But I confess I do not know how to feel around her, Lord M. I love her, of course, and will raise her well, but I do not feel I could cry for her now like you cry for your son. She is, in some ways, a stranger to me. She came from within me, but she is a mystery. It is disconcerting to know that there is so much within me that I do not understand._

_How does one learn to cry for another? To feel such deep emotions for another that it rends oneself in two? You taught me once how to smile, and I cannot help but to think that now, I must learn how to cry._

_Yours,_

_Victoria R._

She admits to herself her mood was low when she wrote that letter. But Lord M, she hopes, will understand. He always does. 

Lord Melbourne never writes back.

* * *

Victoria writes to him again, toward the year’s end.

 _Dear Lord M,_ her second letter begins,

_Are you well? I have not heard back from you._

_The Christmas season is well and truly upon us here at the palace. And as it is the first Christmas with children here, we are really giving it our all to make it a memorable occasion indeed. Albert has devised a way to bring fir trees into the palace—can you imagine it? He says it is an old German tradition, to have trees in the home during Christmas. In the coming days we plan to decorate them with ribbons and ornaments. I think it shall turn out quite pretty, and we can place Vicky’s presents around the base of the largest one._

_I am sorry if the tone of my last letter was too lugubrious, Lord M. I did not mean to complain. Vicky is such a blessing, and I am lucky to have her. Lehzen and Mama have told me that it is not uncommon for women to feel melancholy following childbirth. Perhaps that’s the issue at hand._

_How have you spent your winter, Lord M? Perhaps your sister and her husband have come to visit? I hope you have found some warmth in your greenhouses, or maybe by your fireplace, with a small glass of brandy._

_I do so miss our conversations, and I wonder if you are well._

_Yours,_

_Victoria R._

She sends it away with a page before she retires to her bedchamber. She tells herself she cannot wait for his reply with bated breath, and that he will write back at his own pace.

But he does not reply.

* * *

Her letters lie opened on his desk, in part buried beneath his innumerable pages of poetry. He can spy flashes of her hand, the curls of her letters tightening around words like _cry_ and _Christmas_.

She says she misses him, and his heart hurts.

But he does not reply, because he does not wish for her to know the truth.

He does not want her to know that, despite his quiet retirement in his familiar little home, he is most definitely not well.

A sort of madness has taken hold of him, in this silence. The madness of poets and artists, perhaps, the kind that made the scoundrel Byron ride off to die in a foreign war, and that made Paganini’s fingers glance over the strings of his violin as if he were a daemon. The kind of madness that exchanges logic for passion, gentleness for wildness, and safety for a dagger to the heart. The kind of madness that yearns for pain, for no reason other than that it is _human_ , and _it is real_.

 _There is something beautiful about suffering_ , his mind whispers. 

This madness makes him stay up most evenings, mired in his own memories, and powers the harsh scritch-scratching of his quill pen, along with the tearing of those pages. It makes him feel unstable and unable to control himself.

He fears that on the day he finally turns his eyes upon his Queen once more, and holds her tiny hands in his, he will do something incredibly reprehensible.

How can he look at her again, having written about their tenderest conversations with so much candidness?

How can he look at her again, having written filth about what he would to do her sweet little body, had he been given the chance?

No, William Lamb concludes, he cannot reply to her.

She cannot know of his madness.

* * *

Christmas has come and passed in the palace, and with the new year Victoria is completely besieged by a new worry.

Has something happened to her dear Lord M?

She recalls that the anniversary of his son’s passing was in late November (“I don’t believe I ever told you why I was late to your Coronation Ball, M’am”); perhaps he was still caught in anguish and lamentation for his boy. Perhaps reading about her adventures with her own little daughter had only made his sadness worsen, and not for the first time Victoria curses herself for being entirely too careless and haphazard.

As she sits with Albert in the parlor one evening, she resolves to write Lord M again, and this time properly apologize and ask after his wellbeing.

Albert, cozy in his chair by the fireplace, reads about mathematics, and she soon falls asleep in hers, dreaming of orchids and rooks.

* * *

Another day at Brocket Hall, another few sheets of poetry. It is the morning still, but William has already retreated into his office. His shirt is rumpled and stained (how long has it been since he’s changed it?), and his curly hair stands in complete disarray from a fitful night of shallow slumber.

Despite his own state of dishevelment, he finds that today his quill is steady, and that his poem strikes the right balance between honest and defensible.

_I rode out through the woods one day_

_With her by my side, in green_

_The whipping wind and the rustling leaves_

_Our only companions_

_She wondered then,_

_Her head turned down,_

_Between the oaks and the pines_

_If she should not only be mine_

_To teach and to guide_

_And I_

_Being a good man then_

_A gentle man then_

_Swallowed my envy of others_

_And gave the reply of a gentleman_

_That she should not only be mine_

_That for her to grow and to shine_

_She’d need the aid of others_

_Over every dinner and in every hall_

_In card games and at balls_

_That the best kind of life_

_Was multifarious_

_Colored at once green and red and brown_

_Lest the two of us alone_

_Get caught upon the branches before us_

_Mired in the rushing river_

_and drown_

He was a good man once, he thinks. But that version of him seems almost like a dream, now, a small figment of his own imagination.

Because now, he is anything but good.

He’d believed, years ago, that upon becoming her Prime Minister, his life would become eventful once more. But he’d never thought that that eventfulness would come to fruition during his retirement, over a stack of poems instead of a stack of notes from a dispatch box.

He feels as if he’s been touched more by his months of isolated retirement than by his years of service to her.

Back then, he’d written history.

Now, he writes himself into fantasy, into insanity, and straight into the gates of Hell.

* * *

Victoria sits at her desk, smoothing out her pale blue skirts. In the distance she can hear her daughter laugh, and she can only assume that Albert has gone to visit Vicky in the nursery.

She stares at the blank page before her for a moment and gathers her thoughts.

A few beats later, she is ready.

 _Dear Lord M_ , she begins carefully,

_As I have yet to hear back from you, I can only hope that you are as well as can be. But in truth, I worry for you._

_I realize this time of year tends to be hard for you, and I am so sorry that I carelessly mentioned your dear son in my November letter. So close to the anniversary of his passing, no less. I also realize that prattling on about children and childhood must have been terribly insensitive of me. Despite my own feelings towards motherhood, I know well how much it meant for you to have been a father._

_Do you even know, Lord M, how much I admire you? I feel that it is part of your natural disposition to care for others—for children, for the weak, and for silly girl-queens who would have been lost without you. But I know that because you care deeply, you also grieve in equal measure._

_I just hope that you know that you do not have to face that grief alone. I know we have not spoken nearly as much as we used to since the wedding, but I still do count you amongst my dearest companions. I am prepared to be supportive in any way that I can._

_But I can only help if I know what precisely is wrong. Won’t you write back and tell me how you are really faring?_

_Yours, Victoria R._

She puts her pen down, then, and reads the letter over and over again before she is satisfied. She hopes it does not come off as too aggressive, at the end.

But she really is worried.

She’d asked Emma the night before last, somewhat surreptitiously over their card game as Albert hovered in the corner of the parlor, whether she had heard much from Lord M in the past few months.

Emma had not.

She can only hope that this time, with a proper apology and with a bit more time having passed since the anniversary of his son’s death, that she will receive a reply.

* * *

Victoria’s most recent letter tears him apart.

In all the most terrible ways.

She worries for him, of course. Perhaps that is reasonable. Not a single soul outside of his servants has seen hide or hair of him since the royal wedding, after all.

 _Of course?_ The demons in his head whisper, _She worried so little for you once she ran off after her foreign prince!_ He flashes back to that moment, the look in her eyes as she’d told him goodbye—

He squashes down that thought immediately, because he knows how much it was borne out of base jealousy.

But truthfully, he is shocked by how much she _still_ worries for him. She took her time to pen out a complete apology for her two previous letters, as if he’d deigned not to reply simply because he had been offended by them.

She cares so deeply for his feelings, his dear Queen. Even with a husband, and a child on her hip. And that terrifies him.

Even worse: “I still count you among my dearest companions.”

That damnable word, again. _Companion_. Did she not remember the last time they had uttered this precise word to one another, as she sat over her watercolors? How they had used the term to refer to Elizabeth I and her _lover_ , Earl Leicester, over a stilted dance? How she had confessed her _love_ for him, by the rooks in the garden, and called him _companion_?

God Almighty.

She is his sovereign, and she is so happily married.

But her letter has left him feeling raw in the face of its tenderness, left him imagining things he has no right to.

How far would their _companionship_ have gone, he wonders? Here, in his lonely home, he thinks of her lips, her neck, the swell of her breasts—

Rather than pen a reply to Victoria, he writes another poem.

_Your eyes beg me_

_Your lips beseech me  
_

_You besiege me_

He drops his quill.

* * *

A fortnight has passed since she sent her last letter, and Victoria will have no more of it. She cannot go on worrying, waking up in the middle of the night with the hopes that the tapping in the corridor was the sound of a servant hurrying towards her chambers to deliver her a letter. She can no longer bear the weight of Albert’s gaze upon her, as if he knows she’s worked herself up into a frenzy.

And so she asks Emma, sweet Emma, to borrow her unmarked carriage once more, and dresses carefully in her bonnet and her cloak. Once the carriage is prepared and brought around to the front steps of the palace, Emma accompanies her to the door.

“Best of luck,” she says, and then hesitates. She lays a hand gently on the queen’s shoulder.

“What is it, Emma?” Victoria sees the uncertainty lining her friend’s brow, and it leaves her stomach unsettled.

For a moment there is silence.

“You should know,” says Emma, “How hard he took your marriage. I fear he may not be entirely happy to see you.”

Victoria sighs, and closes her eyes.

“I think you misunderstand what passed between the two of us,” she begins, but Emma interjects suddenly in a manner atypical of her. Her interjection is not harsh, but it certainly is sober and sincere in its delivery.

“No, Your Majesty,” she says, “I do not think so. I have known William my whole life, and I have never seen him look as he did on the morning of your wedding.”

Victoria’s stomach tightened.

“How do you think he looked that day?” She asked, half-afraid to know the answer.

Emma caught her gaze.

“He looked as if he’d cut his own chest open, pulled his heart out, and stored it away in a jar on a bookshelf, to gather dust between the Saint Chrysostom and the Wordsworth.”

* * *

The midafternoon sun blinds him sometimes, from just above his desk, so today he sits on his faded red armchair, dressing gown wrapped around himself. He’d intended to do a bit of light reading, when he’d sat down, but instead he dozes.

His thoughts—dreams—skip like a stone across a pond of his memories. He sees snippets of moments— holding a little porcelain doll in his hands, pulling down a heavy red curtain to reveal a magnificent painting beneath, eyes upon him as he obligingly sports the heavy Windsor uniform—

He hears a commotion downstairs, suddenly, and is roused from his stupor. His neck aches, and he rubs at his eyes.

The commotion is closer now, just outside and down the hallway, and suddenly he realizes that in a few mere moments, someone may demand his presence, request an audience. That they might see the state of his office, the scraps of paper and the deranged poetry that covers the floors and the desk and the walls. That, in seeing this, they may see him for what he truly is.

A selfless man, a poet, a hopeless dreamer. A sinner, a madman, a fucking pervert.

The door to his office swings open, and his heart stops in his chest.

It’s _her_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for now, everyone! 
> 
> I fell hard for Rufus Sewell and all of his characters this past spring, and although I've been writing quite a lot of Obergrüppana ever since, this is my first crack at Vicbourne, so I'd love to hear your comments and advice! I also promise to return to Ante-Post as soon as this short detour is finished. :) 
> 
> Historical Notes
> 
> Writing implements: Because this fic takes place in 1840-1841, both traditional quill pens and the newer metal dip pens, which began to be mass produced in England in 1822, would have simultaneously been in use. Simply for the aesthetic, I made M's primary writing implement be the quill-- I think he's a bit more dreamy, that way ;). For this same reason, although a phrase like "putting pen to paper" sounds incredibly modern by comparison, a great many of his compatriots would indeed have been using metal dip pens at this time. 
> 
> Artistry and Madness: the belief in a connection between artistic genius and madness is at least as old as classical antiquity. In Latin it was referred to as furor poeticus; in that spirit, Plato once wrote, "In vain does one knock at the gates of poetry with a sane mind." The Romantic period in the first half of the 19th century really brought this notion back to the forefront of a lot of peoples' minds, however, through a series of very public rumors and scandals involving various artistic figures of the day. For a more general academic analysis of this topic, Frederick Burwick's Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination (1996) is a good place to start; for a fun account of Paganini and the rumors of devil possession that swirled around him during the height of his fame, check out James H. Johnson's Listening in Paris: a Cultural History (1995).
> 
> Christmas Trees: so although the show portrays Victoria as finding the Christmas tree custom new and fascinating, it is likely she (being half-German herself) had long been aware of their usage; there is a diary entry written by her, aged thirteen, which mentions her love of them. The ITV series also portrays the Christmas tree custom as coming into the royal family/palace quite early on in Albert and Victoria's marriage, and while I'm not exactly sure if that is true, I've just kept to the TV canon here. Historical accuracy be damned, since Victoria and dear Lord M ought to be together anyways!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What use is a knight who harms, even if it is to have you in his arms?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, it's been awhile! I hope you are all having a good holiday season, despite the current global circumstances. I lied about this being two chapters long, LOL. I'm so sorry! It looks like it's going to be three parts total. Nonetheless, I hope you all enjoy the update. In this second-to-last chapter, Lord M and his dearest Queen reunite for the first time since her wedding...

Framed by the doorway, light pouring in from the airy and frigid corridor behind her, Victoria’s clear blue eyes flicker around the room as she stops mid-step. Shock clouds her pretty features.

The last time she had been in here, despite his state of undress, his office had appeared every inch an ordinary place. The red armchair with the little side table, the desk and the bookshelves, the decorative artwork scattered purposefully here and there—

Now, of course, all she sees everywhere is paper. She sees lines upon lines affixed to the walls. She takes in the piles of loose paper dominating his desk, all of which appeared to have been stacked in a manner so hurried they could fall over at any moment. And most of all, she gazes at the sea of crumpled sheets and scraps he’d discarded upon the floor; as she does her lips turn into a tremulous little frown.

She strides into the room and heads straight for one of the little wads of paper. She picks it up, straightens it out, and begins to read the crass words he’d attempted to cross out.

He should stop her, he thinks. Protect her from his irreverent, white-hot lust, and from his every deviant fantasy. But at the same time, he finds it intolerable that she should continue to think of him as a good and gentle and kind man. That she should believe that he is the kind of man worthy of being checked in upon by his monarch, tender as she pleased, when all he could think of was tasting her lips and feeling the sweet squeeze of her quim around his cock.

And so he does not stop her.

She should see for herself, what he truly is. What he has allowed to push forth into the open, from the moment she left his side.

She catches his gaze, then, and he can see tears in her eyes. She lets the paper fall from her grasp, and his eyes trail its descent back down to the ground.

What does she see in him now, he wonders?

Is she afraid? Disgusted?

“Oh, dear Lord M,” she says, and rather than fear or disgust, he hears pity in her tone. Pity for the old friend, the first love, the foolish old man who’d turned her away, only to return home and waste away in silence.

It cuts him to his core. He cannot handle it. He simply cannot.

He gets up from his armchair, suddenly, and makes to back away from her. But she surges forward quickly and takes his hands in her own before he manages an escape. She does not wear gloves, and he can feel the heat of her lily-white skin against his.

“I am so sor—”

“Don’t,” he says, cutting her off brusquely. “Please, M’am.” He is not quite sure whether he is attempting to forestall her apology or her touching.

“But I am,” she insists, eyes still mournful, hands still holding on, “Because I had hoped…to make us _both_ happier, by marrying Albert.”

Her thumb begins to stroke a pattern into his worn and ink-stained skin, and suddenly he feels as if he cannot breathe. All his clever words and lines are trapped deep within him now, locked behind an inhalation that does not come. So he remains silent, and she continues on after taking a shaky breath.

“I know you said—we said—that I ought not to marry simply to please you.”

“Please don’t tell me that you have,” he says, voice finally unlatching in the face of sheer panic. Had he doomed her to a loveless life, and himself to waste away in the very same breath?

He deserves nothing less than a bullet through the skull for this, he thinks. He knows the pistol in the drawer of his desk is not loaded, and tangentially his brain wonders how quickly it would take for his valet to procure him some new bullets in London.

“No!” she nearly shouts, as if she can sense his terror, “I love Albert. I do. But it would also be a lie to say that I didn’t hope at all for your approval.” At this, she sounds really small, almost as if she’d been caught red-handed stealing _marron glacé_ from the kitchens. Her thumb stills upon his skin, and he wonders for a brief moment if she’s thought better of touching him in so unguarded a manner.

“You have my approval,” he manages, and the words taste like ash in his mouth. He pulls his hands from hers, finally ( _Pervert_ , his mind screams at him, recriminating, _how long did you intend to sully that perfect skin by keeping a hold of those hands?_ ), and retreats to his desk. She follows, however, and before he can lower himself into his desk chair, she grabs a hold of his shoulder. He whips around to face her as she does, and he can feel the fractures within his mind splitting wider and wider. They’d begun as near-invisible hairlines, on that day that she’d left him in the hallway with a quiet _I shall never forget_ , and only grown ever since.

“But what use is it to approve of things that make you so desperately unhappy?” She says, eyes shining with emotion, her words landing heavy into the silence of the room.

He cannot handle this. He’d long feared the coming this day, when his Queen would appear in the flesh before him once more. He has to keep himself together.

He cannot shatter now.

“I believe I have told you, M’am, that it is our task to understand the difference between duty and inclination—”

“And yet, you found a way to give me a life in which I could accommodate both. Why could I not help do the same for you?”

Her words pierce him, whisper-quick, their veracity as cutting as the fine edge of a sharpened blade. Because he knows that they are true. It had never been enough for him that she merely marry—he’d wanted her to marry someone who would appreciate her, love her, honor her, and cherish her. He’d wanted all of those things for her, regardless of her particular royal duty to marry and produce an heir.

For her, he’d allowed both duty and inclination. He’d been determined that she would want for nothing.

But for himself, well.

He knows he is not deserving of both.

“You cannot help me,” he says, anguished.

“Why ever not?” Victoria insists, taking one step closer to him.

“ _Because my inclinations would destroy you,_ ” he admits, voice hoarse with shame. He shoots a glance at the sheet that she’d dropped a few paces behind her, and then looks back to meet her eyes.

“Because you desire me?” She asks, boldly. They’d always spoken in metaphors, the two of them— _inclinations_ , _companionship_. Never before had they spoken of love or of desire.

But his little Queen, a tempest in the form of a woman, had just blown the cloaks of those metaphors clean off of their shoulders. It is at once strange and refreshing, like running headfirst into a sudden summer rain, to have finally dispensed with carefully crafted endearments, sly allusions to past queens, or even the language of flowers.

He could lie, as he always had.

But what was the point?

“Yes,” he says quietly, and she comes even closer—

“But desire is only the beginning of the tale.”

His voice has dropped low, and it fills the air between them with heady smoke. She is so close now, so very close—he can count her eyelashes, feel her quick breaths upon his skin, smell the sweet scent of her floral perfume—

“Then recite the tale to me in full, dear bard,” Victoria whispers, her pupils blown.

He breaks. Absolutely, incontrovertibly breaks. No longer are there fissures across his mind; he has splintered open completely. He is like a million shards of glass, shining diamond-bright in the midafternoon sun. Like her crown, bathed in the stained-glass light of Westminster Abbey, gemstones glinting in every which way—

* * *

He recites it to her in two ways.

* * *

The first recitation of his love is undertaken in body.

He takes Victoria’s tiny waist into his hands and pulls her suddenly to him. He holds onto her tightly, pressing their bodies flush against one another from chest to groin. She is so warm and real, beneath his hands. Pulsing and beating and full of life.

He thrusts his hips against hers, then. Once, twice. She gasps, no doubt feeling his hardness between them, and the sound rings clear through the room.

Bending down to nuzzle her ear, Lord Melbourne murmurs,

“From the first you have enraptured me. Did you know, on that day we met, how much you impressed me? I thought often about what the girl locked away in Kensington would be like, when she became queen, and put together in my mind the image of some frail, hesitant little thing. But instead I found you, a little tempest. You, who already knew then, what you wanted—that you wanted your own independence, and that you wished to no longer be run by that buffoon Conroy.”

He pulls back, just a bit, to nip the shell of her ear. She sighs and closes her eyes in response.

“But Conroy was right about one thing,” he admits, voice dropping even quieter, “and that is that I have, nearly from the beginning, looked upon you with eyes of _lust_. I am a scoundrel, M’am.”

His hands around her waist flex, momentarily gripping her harder, pulling her closer to rub against him—

She cries out in surprise and in pleasure.

“Christ,” he rasps, “The night of the coronation ball, in that hallway…I wanted so badly to take what your eyes were offering me. Grab a fistful of your hair and ruin your pretty updo, and just kiss you senseless.” He exhales harshly and he feels his cock pulse in his breeches. She is silent in his arms, but he can feel her attention absolutely fixed upon him. Upon the heat of his body and the fire in his words.

“I wanted to press you back up against the wall,” William continues relentlessly, “and ruck up your skirts to find that sweet heat between your legs that you keep hidden away. I’d have stroked you there first, just to make sure you were dripping wet for me, before shoving my cock deep inside of you. Virginity be damned…”

He cups her cheek tenderly and looks straight into her eyes.

“What do you think of that, M’am?” he whispers, his lips a mere hairsbreadth away from hers.

“I would have let you,” Victoria confesses, gasping, “I desired you so much.”

_Would have._

_Past tense._

He feels a pang in his heart.

“And now?” Melbourne asks desperately, “Here? Would you let me have you, despite your husband, your child, and your reign, just to keep one of your dearest companions happy?”

For a moment there is a beat of silence.

“Yes,” Victoria says, “yes.”

If he were still a good man, he would have heard the hesitation in her tone, released her from his arms, and gently chided her for offering her happiness up in exchange for his own.

But he is no longer a good man. He’s got the Devil inside of him, keeping him awake at all hours, filling him up with words. Words that clamor to be released, written down, and inked into existence. Words that disturb his tranquility, and that _demand_ to become action.

So he kisses her, his sweet and devoted Queen.

* * *

The second recitation of his love is undertaken, of course, in a poem.

Victoria sleeps in his worn armchair just behind him, bare but for her chemise and the robe he’s draped over her to keep the cold from chilling her bones. Her hair, freed from its confines earlier by his questing fingers, lies fanned out against the upholstery, chestnut cutting through crimson red.

He sits at his desk clad only in his breeches. He’s rescued the inkpot and quill from where they’d fallen upon the floor earlier and is inordinately glad to see that some ink remains. With sweat drying against his brow, he writes.

_My darling, I wish_

_I could be your knight-at-arms_

_Keep you safe from harm_

_But today I put down_

_My shield and my sword_

_My wit and my words_

_Which kept your enemies far_

_And kept you, in turn_

_From coming too close_

_And beneath it all_

_I found_

_Under my helmet, a mind_

_My breastplate, a heart_

_My image, a man_

_You loved me_

_Henceforth I existed_

He pauses, here, and sighs. He hears her shift slightly behind him, and he wonders if she is dreaming.

 _But, my love,_ he continues,

 _The cost is high_

_With no armour,_

_I shan’t defend you well_

_With no weapon,_

_I cannot carve you a path forward_

_With only thin skin_

_And struggling breath_

_I stand at the edge of an abyss_

_I am not a man like any other_

_I have let insanity come to roost_

_Within me_

_And so with every touch, I cut you_

_With every kiss, I bruise you_

_And with my love, I abuse you_

_And what use is a knight who harms_

_Even if it is to have you in his arms?_

He sets down his quill. Melbourne reads over his most recent effort carefully, fingers tracing over the drying ink. Finally satisfied, he picks up the parchment and folds it before addressing it to her on the top face. He approaches his slumbering queen quietly, heart aching, and leaves his recitation on the end table for her to find when she awakens.

He returns to his desk, then, and unlocks the drawer.

The pistol feels cool beneath his fingertips, hard and unyielding. He thinks it is time to ask Baines to purchase some bullets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for now, but I promise that the dramatic conclusion is coming soon! I appreciate you all reading, and would love to hear what you all think.
> 
> Historical notes
> 
> Perfume: Queen Victoria was frequently reported by her acquaintances to wear orange blossom perfume, which had a deep sentimental value to her. Orange blossoms were the flowers she had worn on the day of her wedding to Albert, so their scent reminded her of him, even long after he had died. For the purposes of our fic here, I haven't specified the type of floral perfume she was wearing. ;) Makes it easier for us to imagine it was the scent of orchids, to remind Victoria of her dear Lord M.


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